


Five Times Henry's Allergies Interfered With a Case (And the One Time They Helped Him Solve One)

by wig_powder



Category: Forever (TV 2014)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Allergies, Gen, Sneezing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 19:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21166589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wig_powder/pseuds/wig_powder
Summary: Henry's sensitive nose may sometimes be useful in his line of work, but it's generally more trouble than it's worth.





	Five Times Henry's Allergies Interfered With a Case (And the One Time They Helped Him Solve One)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Shay after I requested "Five Times" prompts.

ONE

“Anything, Henry?” Detective Martinez asked, crouching down beside the body.

“Nothing definitive yet,” Henry answered, looking over the victim’s outfit, “Based on the tears in her clothes, her attacker was left-handed and considerably shorter than her. Other than that, however, all I can say for certain is that she was stabbed.”

“Yeah, I think we all figured that one out, Doc.” Hanson said sarcastically.

Henry just smiled and stood up, wanting to see the body from a different angle. The moment he caught sight of her shoes, his eyes lit up. “What is it, Henry?” Jo said at once, spotting his expression.

“Remember the case in the Metropolitan?” Henry said, digging around in his toolbag, “Our victim here is wearing a similar, old-fashioned pair of shoes. Which means…”

“That fingerprint powder of yours!” Jo finished, even as Henry withdrew his tin of the aforementioned powder, “Good work, Henry.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Henry cautioned, carefully brushing the area a little ways away, “This won’t work if she came in from outside and walked on grass to get in here. But at the very least, I should be able to tell if she was running from her attacker, or if the attack surprised her.”

While Henry dusted the area, Jo and Hanson continued to look around the scene. “Why would a girl dressed like this want to come to an abandoned factory late at night?” Hanson said, shaking his head, “It just doesn’t seem like her thing.”

“There are any number of reasons,” Henry said, still focused on his brushing, “She could have been here to deliver a payoff, to meet a lover, to purchase something illicit. She might even have come here on a dare, or just to have an adventure.”

He turned on his flashlight and shone it around the area. The footprints showed up, as expected…along with what appeared to be a second, smaller heel. Blinking, he dusted the area slightly to the left of the footprint, hoping to illuminate the other pair. Unfortunately, even with the flashlight, the light was too dim for him to be sure if it was another shoe or just a lighter imprint from the victim’s shoe. The only way he’d know for sure was if he took a closer look. And that was the problem.

Henry would never have admitted it out loud, but he’d always had a bit of a reaction whenever he got too close to that powder. It certainly wasn’t bad enough to cause a rash or block off his air passages, but whenever he was at eye level with the powder, an itch would spring up in his nose, and would linger until (or unless) he finally sneezed it out. He wasn’t sure if it was an actual allergy or just one of those things that managed to tickle his nose in the right way, but he tried to avoid it whenever possible. Most of the time, he didn’t need to use it, and when he did, he could keep a safe distance. Now, however, it looked like he didn’t have a choice.

With a wince, he crouched even closer to the floor and squinted at the mystery print, turning his head this way and that to try to positively identify it as a different shoe. The itch started up at once, but Henry wrinkled his nose and tried to ignore it; it could wait until he was done here. “You got something?” Jo said, starting to approach.

“Maybe,” Henry said, speaking carefully to keep his breath from hitching, “This may be a…a different print. What do you think?”

As Jo came over and bent down to take a look for herself, Henry straightened up, thankful to be away from the irritation. “Hard to say,” Jo finally concluded, “Give the area more of a brush, and then we’ll know for sure.”

Henry nodded and had just picked up his tin of powder when the itch in his nose decided that enough was enough. Before Henry could even attempt to cover his nose, the sneeze burst out of him. “_At-CHH!_”

As expected, the itch vanished from his nose at once. With a sigh of relief, he opened his eyes, only getting a second of contentment before he realized what had happened. His tin of powder had been in just the right place to be jolted when he sneezed, spilling a good dose of the powder onto the factory floor. Even worse, however, was the fact that it had apparently been close enough to his face that some of the powder had been blown away by the force of his sneeze…straight into Jo’s face. Her face and the front of her blouse were now covered with the grey-black powder. She looked at him incredulously, as if she couldn’t believe Henry was capable of doing something like that. At the moment, he couldn’t either.

“I’m so sorry, Detective,” Henry said, cringing, “It just sort of…came on.”

“I can tell,” Jo said, withdrawing a tissue pack from her pocket and starting to clean off her face, “You always struck me as the sort who would cover his mouth.”

“And it’s true,” Henry said, “This is an unusual circumstance. Is there anything I can…”

“No, no, I can clean myself up. You get back to the prints.”

“Er…” Henry felt the heat rising to his face, “I’m afraid I may have just…spilled all the powder I have on hand. I have more of it back at my place, though. If you lend me your phone, I can call Abe and ask him to bring another tin over.”

Jo pinched her nose with the hand holding the tissue, though it was obvious that it wasn’t because she needed to muffle a sneeze of her own. “All right, Henry. Let’s just hope the footprints don’t fade in the meantime.”

TWO

“Who do we have here, Lucas?” Henry asked as he snapped on a fresh pair of gloves.

“Let’s see…” Lucas consulted a clipboard, “Cathleen Rogers, age 60. Found lying flat on her back in her driveway, right behind her car. No one’s sure if it’s a heart attack, if she was hit, or something more sinister.”

He put some extra dramatic emphasis on the last two words, which Henry pointedly ignored. Instead, he nodded and turned on the overhead light. “All right, then. Let’s get to work.”

They started with the legs and chest cavity, looking for any signs of a collision or heart failure. When both avenues turned up empty, Henry moved to her face, looking for traces of poisoning. As he bent down to take a look at her tongue, his nose gave a light prickle. He ignored it initially, focused on the task at hand. But by the time he’d determined that yes, she _had_ had a bad reaction to something, the prickle had turned into a nagging itch. Henry sniffed, unable to rub his nose thanks to the gloves, and looked over at Lucas. “Lucas, what was Ms. Rogers wearing when she died?”

“Oh, man, she was dressed to the nines, Doc! Diamond rings, multi-strand pearl necklace, outfit and shoes by the best designers in town. She even had a fur stole! Probably mink, but maybe it was fox. I bet you’d know if you saw it, you knowing everything and all.”

“It was chinchilla fur.” Henry said, heart sinking as his suspicions were confirmed.

Lucas’ mouth dropped open. “You haven’t even _seen_ it! How could you possibly know?”

“In two ways,” Henry answered, “One, chinchilla fur has a very distinct black-grey look, and I can see traces of it clinging to her neck and shoulders. And two, I happen to be allergic to it.”

“Oh, geez,” Lucas said, “You going to be all right?”

“I believe so. Since it’s just a few isolated hairs, the worst effect on me should be a few sneezes. If she was still wearing the coat, it would be a different story.” He could still vividly remember the time he had ruined one young woman’s gorgeous coat back in 1927, simply by being unable to stop sneezing on it. That had taken quite a lot of apologies and a positively criminal amount of money to solve.

“If you say so,” Lucas said, “Still, better to wrap this up sooner rather than later. The tox guys will be going off duty soon, so if we want to get this sample processed for Martinez and Hanson tomorrow, we should get a move on.”

“Agreed,” Henry said, “You draw a blood sample, I’ll keep looking to see if I can narrow things down for them.”

Lucas was getting better at drawing blood; he had the sample withdrawn and in a petri dish within five minutes. Henry nodded his approval as he took the sample and moved over to label it (his handwriting was far neater than Lucas’). He had the dish in one hand and the pen in the other, and was in the process of writing the victim’s name when he moved his hand a little too quickly and the pen rapped against the side of his nose. In any other circumstance, it would have been a minor nuisance, but the vibration of the collision set off the itch in his nose, and he had no choice but to sneeze. “_Hit-KSHH!_”

It felt like the dish slipped out of his fingers in slow motion, but he still wasn’t fast enough to get a better grip on it. By the time he’d forced his eyes open, the dish had bounced off the edge of the desk, and Henry could only watch as it ricocheted off the operating table, before finally colliding with the leg of a chair, where the plastic finally gave out and shattered. For a moment, both he and Lucas stared at the mess, unsure how to process what they’d just seen. As accidents went, that had been a surprisingly artful one.

Lucas was finally the one to break the silence. “Bless you.”

Henry managed to chuckle. “Thank you. Prepare another sample, and rest it on the desk this time. I’ll clean this up in the meantime.”

Unfortunately, by the time the sample was fully prepared and labeled, the toxicology lab had closed for the evening. It took until mid-afternoon the next day for them to confirm that it was poison, arsenic to be exact. “Well, that’s just great!” Hanson said when he read over the report, “It’s going to take forever to figure out where that came from! And the more time we spend on that, the colder the trail gets. Couldn’t you guys have figured this out a _little_ faster?”

To his credit, Lucas managed to keep a relatively straight face. Henry just coughed and tactfully changed the subject.

THREE

Henry looked up at the neon sign advertising The Pearl Necklace with a certain amount of trepidation. “Are you _sure_ we couldn’t have questioned these girls in their own homes?”

“It would take too much time that way,” Jo answered, showing her badge to the bouncer at the door, “If we do it here, they’re all in one place. We’ll be able to question each girl between their acts.”

Henry just sighed and tugged at his lapel. Jo glanced at him over her shoulder with a grin. “I take it you’ve never been in one of these before.”

“Never.” Henry said. While he wasn’t immune to the pleasures of the flesh, he’d never felt the need to seek it out in this manner. Besides, he’d had a reputation to think of, and then Abigail had come along. Why had he needed things like this when he’d had her?

  
“Well, cheer up,” Jo said, as someone directed them to the backstage area, “This is a burlesque club. Way more upscale than a strip club, and way less obvious toplessness.” Before Henry could respond to that, Jo had pushed the door open, and they found themselves backstage.

It was a large room, with two long rows of makeup tables on either side, and small, curtained off sections at the very back so the…performers…could change costumes. Twenty young women were running around in various states of undress, chatting to each other and barely taking notice of Jo and Henry. Still, for politeness’ sake, Henry tried to keep his eyes focused on the far wall. Then he felt a hand on his arm, and Jo tugged him even further into the room. “Come on, Henry. The sooner we question them, the more we can preserve your virgin eyes.” Henry rolled his eyes, but obligingly followed.

Their first subject was a young woman sitting at the far end of the room, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. To Henry’s relief, she was currently dressed, and fairly nicely at that, in an approximation of a flapper, complete with a cigarette holder and feather boa currently nestled in her lap. “Detective Martinez,” Jo said, holding out her badge when the woman spotted them in the mirror, “And this is my partner, Henry Morgan. We’re here investigating the death of the club owner, Mr. Lohr.”

“Oh yeah, that,” the woman said, gesturing for them to sit down, “I don’t know how much help I can be. I didn’t know him that well.”

“But he _was_ here the night he was murdered, Miss…”

“Garnet.” the woman said, carefully applying her mascara.

“I’m going to need your real name, Miss.”

“You can get it after the show. When we’re on duty, we’re only to be referred to by our stage names. Club policy.”

Jo sighed. “Fine. Garnet. Did you see Mr. Lohr that night?”

Garnet shrugged. “His upstairs booth was occupied during the show. That’s all I know for sure. When you’re on stage, the lights are too bright to see anything clearly.”

“So you never actually saw his face or heard his voice.”

“No,” Garnet said, sitting back in her chair and picking up the feather boa from her lap, “But he never talked to me much anyway. I’m a recent hire, so I was too unproven for him to give me the time of day.”

She put the boa around her neck and expertly flipped it like a scarf. Henry admired the technique, but he’d underestimated the length of the boa. Thus, it smacked him in the face as it passed by him, the dark red feathers obscuring his vision and invading his nose for a few seconds. Unfortunately, that was more than enough time for his nose to go haywire. Almost as soon as the feathers touched him, an itch sprang up in his nose. By the time the feathers had moved away, his breath had started hitching. “_Heh…ihh…ihhh…_”

“Henry?” Jo looked over at him, fanning strands of feather away from her face, “You all right?”

Henry only just managed to shake his head before the sneezing started. “_Ih-CHHT! CHHT! CHSSHH!_”

“Hey, watch the dress!” Garnet said, moving her chair away from him, “Is your partner allergic to feathers or something?”

“I don’t know. _Are _you, Henry?”

“Y-yes and…_NISHH!_…no,” Henry choked out, rubbing desperately at his nose as he struggled to get his handkerchief out, “They d-don’t bo…_OSHH!_…bother me if they’re kept at a…_ah…ASHH!_…a distance, like in feather beds, but if they bru…_USHH!!_…brush against my nose, I just can’t seem to stop…_HAISHH! GISHH!_”

“I get the point,” Jo said, “How long does it take for the feeling to wear off?”

“F-five to…to…_TUSHH!_…ten minutes.” Henry said, pressing his handkerchief to his nose, sure his cheeks had gone bright red at this point. This wasn’t exactly making a good impression on the dancers.

“All right,” Jo said, “Go on outside and try to get this under control. I can handle the questions on my own till then.”

Henry nodded and got to his feet. “T-terribly sorry, Mi…_MISHH!_”

“Just go!” Garnet said, waving her hand at him, “We don’t need you making a mess in here.”

(It wound up taking about fifteen minutes for the sneezing to subside, and Henry’s nose had a lingering tickle for the rest of the evening. During that time, Jo quickly and efficiently managed to question six girls, including one who called herself Citrine. Citrine, it turned out, was Lohr’s mistress, something Henry would have noticed if he’d been there to see the imprint of Lohr’s ring on her finger, taken off to avoid drawing suspicion to the two of them. Her testimony was invaluable to catching the murderer, but she wasn’t brave enough to come forward until the police arrested the wrong man, which threatened to shut the club down. Henry apologized profusely to Jo and Hanson when he realized what had happened, and starting looking into ways to combat his feather sensitivity. He refused to let something like _that_ happen again.)

FOUR

“All right, tread carefully,” Jo said to the five other policemen (plus Hanson) she’d brought in, “MacCaan could be anywhere in this warehouse, and we don’t want to alert him to our presence any sooner than we have to. Slip in quietly and fan out, but stay close to each other. If one of you spots him, signal the others so that we can close in and give him nowhere to run. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” the men all answered immediately.

Jo turned to Henry, who had just happened to be in the car when the call came through. “And as for you, just…stay in a corner, ok? Don’t try to be a hero when you’re not even armed. Unless you spot him, don’t move. Got it?”

“Loud and clear, Detective.” Henry said with a slight smile.

Jo nodded her satisfaction and carefully pushed open the door. “Let’s go.” she whispered.

One by one, the six policemen trickled in, with Henry bringing up the rear. As Jo carefully closed the door, the men each took a row and began to move down it. True to his word, Henry crept into the corner nearest the door, looking around curiously. He’d been in his fair share of warehouses over the past few months thanks to working with Jo, but never one of this size. He could barely see the ceiling in the dim light, and there were tall metal racks that rose into the air like spindly trees. Combined with the quiet and the still air, it gave off a rather eerie effect.

Henry reached the corner and pressed his back up against it, folding his arms. In an instant, he caught a familiar but undefinable scent, and panic rose in his chest. He should have considered that a warehouse was generally used to store items when not being used. And when it was a mostly abandoned warehouse, like this one was, it meant that there would no doubt be a generous layer of dust over everything.

If Henry had ever admitted that he was allergic to dust, the person he’d confessed to would have burst out laughing. It was understandable, of course; he lived in an antique shop, which many people considered a magnet for old, dusty things. But there was a reason Abe’s store was so clean and bright, and only some of it had to do with making it pleasing to the customers. And as for those times when he’d had to look over a body in a dusty space, there was generally an open door or window nearby to take the edge off. At the very least, he had the body to distract him. Right now, though, all he had to distract him was his thoughts, which would _not_ be enough to stave off a reaction.

Henry pinched his nose and tried to breathe through his mouth, shutting his eyes and trying to think of something, _anything_, other than his current situation. Unfortunately, all other thoughts had been driven out of his head, and all he could think of was the fact that the more the policemen moved around, the more dust would be kicked into the air, and even in a large space such as this, it wouldn’t be long before the air was suffused with the tiny particles. Just the thought of that caused the itch in his nose to get that much stronger. _You can hold out,_ he told himself firmly, _There are only so many places in here that MacCaan can hide. They’ll find him soon, and once someone calls out, I’ll be free to sneeze._

MacCaan, however, must have been at the far end of the room, because another five minutes passed without a sound. At that point, despite Henry’s pinched nose, his allergy had kicked in full force, and now sneezing was all but inevitable. Henry swallowed nervously and pulled his scarf up over his face as a makeshift handkerchief, pinching his nose through the cloth to muffle the sound as much as possible. “_Nch!_”

It wasn’t enough; of course it wasn’t. The only cure for his allergies was to get away from the irritant and to sneeze out whatever he’d inhaled, neither of which was currently possible. All he could do was keep his nose covered and try to keep quiet. He tried to hold his breath, but the itch forced him to take a shaky breath through his mouth before his shoulders bobbed with another sneeze. “_Innt!_”

As he pressed himself further into the wall in an attempt to be as unobtrusive as possible, his foot brushed against a tarp that had been placed in the corner. He could actually _see_ the dust fly off the cloth and into the air, surrounding him. Even though he didn’t inhale any of it, just the sight was enough to set him off into a fit. “_Nxt! Knxxt! Ngsst! Sst!_”

Perhaps due to the dust being trapped inside his nose, what the sneezes lacked in volume they made up for in force. Henry’s body jerked forward with each sneeze, and he barely had enough time to straighten up before another sneeze sent him forward again. Even though he was trying to keep a tight grip on his nose throughout all this, one particularly hard sneeze managed to dislodge his fingers. And the moment his body sensed that it had an opening to release the irritants, it took full advantage of it. Before Henry could try to pinch his nose again, a sneeze burst out of him, completely uncovered. “_At-TISHHH!_”

He was vaguely aware of a pounding of feet from somewhere at the far corner of the warehouse, but all of his attention was focused on trying to get rid of the dust. “_Keshh! Shh! Et-tishhh!_”

After what he thought was his fifteenth sneeze, he heard a voice nearby. “I should have guessed it was you, Henry. Fortunately, we were able to catch him before he made it to the back exit, even if we’ve knocked over a few potential evidence boxes and Hanson’s skinned both knees and an elbow.”

Henry managed to open his eyes just long enough to catch a glimpse of Jo, looking at him with a mixture of amusement, irritation, and concern. Then his eyes were forced shut and he snapped forward again. “_Ishoo!_”

“Bless you. God, I think your nose might actually be glowing.” A hand was on his arm, tugging him forward. “Come on, let’s get you into the car. I’ll chew you out once you’ve gotten that under control.”

FIVE

“And you swear you didn’t see Mr. Rubin the night he was murdered?” Jo said, looking skeptically at the man sitting across from her, “You’re his business associate, and it was a work night. Surely you _must _have spoken to him at least, especially considering that large deal you were getting close to closing.”

Mr. Boggs shifted uncomfortably in his chair, though it was hard to say for sure whether it was due to guilt or due to physical discomfort. “Well, we saw each other in the office, of course, and Nate _did_ call me after dinner to discuss our plans for the next day, but I swear, I didn’t see or hear from him after that.”

Lieutenant Reece glanced at Henry. “What do you think?”

“I’m not certain yet,” Henry replied, squinting through the two-way glass at Boggs, “His voice _sounds_ genuine, but his body language is hard to read at the moment. Hopefully Jo will ask him something that sheds a little more light on things.”

“Lieutenant!”

Both Reece and Henry turned around to see a younger cop coming towards them, holding something in a plastic bag. “What is it, Grant?” Reece said.

Grant held the bag out to them. “We think we finally found the murder weapon,” he said, shaking it for emphasis, “Someone’ll need to run a blood test to be sure, but that definitely looks like blood.”

Henry peered at the switchblade in the bag, and nodded as he spotted the red streaks on the edges. “That’s my department,” he said, taking the bag, “We’ll let Detective Martinez see this, and then I’ll take…”

He paused as an itchy sensation suddenly sprung up in his eyes and nose. “Where…where exactly did you find this?” he said.

“Not too far from the body,” Grant answered, “The killer must have thrown it and hoped it would land in the river and get carried off. Well, they missed their target; landed in a clump of wildflowers instead.”

Henry closed his eyes to prevent himself from groaning. That would explain it. And based on how quickly his symptoms were flaring up… “Tell me, Grant, were any of the wildflowers in small, thin bunches, with a bright yellow color?”

“Um…yeah,” Grant said, clearly confused, “The knife had crushed one of them, actually. Why…”

“Ragweed,” Henry sighed, “Of course it was ragweed.”

“Give it here,” Reece said, taking the bag from Henry and tapping on the window to get Jo’s attention, “No need to expose yourself to allergens any more than you have to. You’ll be getting a faceful of the stuff when you need to do the blood test, after all.”

Henry wanted to thank her properly, but his hayfever had kicked in full force by that time, and all he could do was nod before burying his nose in his arm. “_Ipfft! Mshh!_”

He’d just managed to get his nose under control when Jo emerged. “What is it?”

Reece held out the evidence bag. “Show him this. Grant just found it near the scene. We aren’t positive it’s the murder weapon, but it might offer us a lead, anyway.”

“Got it.” Jo said, taking the bag and giving it a quick once-over before disappearing once more.

Henry tried to focus his attention on the interrogation, rather than the lingering effects of the ragweed, but the bag changing hands so many times had thrown a bit more pollen into the air, and even though he was fighting against it, another sneeze was inevitable. And as he leaned forward to take a good look at Bogg’s face when Jo showed him the knife, the pollen became too much for him, and he was forced to turn his head away, unable to cover his mouth. “_Hetishh!_”

A bang reverberated throughout the room, followed by a stinging against his palm. He’d instinctively thrown out a hand to steady himself against the nearest surface, which had, of course, been the two-way mirror. And instead of merely resting his hand against it, the force of the sneeze had caused him to smack into it. Fortunately, it hadn’t damaged the glass. Unfortunately…

Jo reappeared, looking at them curiously. “What is it now? Found something else?”

Henry shook his head, not wanting to look at Reece, who he was sure had that disapproving expression on her face. “No. My apologies, Detective, but I…sneezed. That blade and the evidence bag were coated in ragweed pollen, and I guess it was affecting me more than I realized.”

Jo sighed. “All right. This interruption probably gave Boggs enough time to formulate a cover story. I’d better get back in there to get things back on track.”

As Jo disappeared, Henry turned to Reece, looking at a point over her shoulder. “I’ll just…head to the morgue and wait for the knife to come in, shall I? I can start to prepare the blood sample from Rubin’s body while I wait.”

“You do that, Doctor,” Reece said, “And while you’re at it, take some allergy medication. I think you’re going to need it.” Henry, feeling the heat rising to his face, just nodded and scurried off.

SIX

“So, what’s the verdict?” Jo asked as Henry removed his gloves.

“Based off the marks on the victim’s neck and the pictures you gave me of the noose and the crime scene, I’d say this was a murder dressed up to look like a suicide.” Henry answered.

Jo, looking startled, brandished a piece of paper at him. “Really? Because everything else is pointing to suicide. Parker was seeing a therapist for depression, he’d been having a rough time of it at work, his doctor said he was currently trying to find the right dose for his antidepressants, and we’ve got confirmation from multiple sources that this suicide note was written in his handwriting.”

Henry took the note from her and scanned the contents. “Be that as it may, all the medical evidence is pointing towards murder. Have you had a handwriting analyst check to make sure this isn’t a forger…”

His voice stuttered out on the word, his nose crinkling. Looking at the paper thoughtfully, he brought it a little closer to his face and actively sniffed it. “Henry, what on earth are you doing?” Jo said, her tone a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.

Henry responded by turning his head away and sneezing into his sleeve. “_Higshew!_”

Jo put a hand to her forehead. “_Another _allergy, Henry? Is there dust on the paper, or something? I can’t see how, considering how often it’s been moved around these past twenty-four hours.”

Henry shook his head, smiling a little as he brought out a handkerchief to rub at his nose. “Ink.”

“Come again?”

“Ink,” Henry repeated, “Most inks are made out of certain specific dyes suspended in solvent, but there is one very specific, exclusive pen manufacturer that makes their ink out of…well, I won’t go into the entire chemical composition, but suffice it to say that the combination is enough to make me sneeze, even when the ink is dry.”

“Ink,” Jo said, shaking her head in disbelief, “Seriously, _ink_. Of all the allergies I’ve ever heard of, that’s a new one.”

“The body’s defense system is an unusual thing,” Henry said, handing the note back, “And in this case, I believe I can turn it to our advantage.”

“How?” Jo sounded intrigued, despite herself.

“If you’re willing to go on a potential wild goose chase, I should be able to track down the exact pen that wrote this note. If we can confirm the pen to be Mr. Parker’s, then I will admit to being in the wrong about my diagnosis, and we can close the case.”

“That…that might actually work,” Jo said, eyes lighting up, “Come on, let’s give it a try.”

And that was how Henry found himself standing in the middle of Parker’s kitchen, using every pen in the apartment to draw one single line on a piece of paper, then holding it to his face to breathe in the scent. Jo (and a baffled Hanson) combed every inch of the place, looking for hidden pens, wanting to make absolutely certain it hadn’t fallen behind a desk or rolled under a sofa. After going through about thirty of them (including an unopened box, just to be sure), Henry set the final pen down and shook his head. “He didn’t write it with any of these pens, which at least suggests that if he _did_ write that note, he didn’t do it at home.”

“It still could have been premeditated,” Hanson pointed out, “He could have written it at his office, wanting to make sure everything was in order before coming home to do it.”

“And that’s why we’re going to his office next,” Henry said mildly, looking over at Jo with a smile, “Isn’t that right, Detective?”

“I’ve already got the keys out,” Jo answered, jangling the keys in question, “Come on, times a wasting.”

The three of them arrived at Parker’s business an hour before closing time. Nobody gave them a passing glance, assuming this was part of the police wrap-up. Thus, they were able to slip into Parker’s corner office and close the door, the better to not have people poking their head in and boggling at what could only be described as an unorthodox investigative procedure.

Thankfully, Parker kept all his work pens in one ornately carved holder on his desk, and it only took two minutes for Hanson and Jo to search the room and conclude there weren’t any others lying around. Henry quickly and efficiently checked each pen, then shook his head. “It’s not here. That’s not to say that it couldn’t be in his car, or that someone borrowed it from him before he left work for the evening, but at the moment, it doesn’t seem like he owned that particular brand of pen.”

“So what now?” Hanson asked.

“Now,” Jo answered, “We start looking for motives. And while we question some of Parker’s co-workers, we find excuses to look through their pens. The minute Henry sneezes, we’ve got a suspect.”

“Reece is never gonna believe this,” Hanson said, even as he grinned, “We cracked a case thanks to an allergy.”

“Well, she’ll be the first to admit that Henry has a ‘nose’ for hidden details.” Jo responded, before giving Henry a sideways wink. Henry just chuckled and followed her out of the office, taking a welcome breath of the air-conditioned surroundings. Considering what they were planning, he’d welcome the opportunity not to breathe in chemicals for a few minutes.


End file.
